


Just Desserts (And Dinners Too)

by Masu_Trout



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Gold & Silver & Crystal | Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal Versions
Genre: Awkward Crush, Bonding, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pokemon Battle, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6422338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>His instincts were screaming at him to run after Silver, but the more sensible side of his brain knew that would be a terrible idea. Silver could be odd sometimes, but he was trustworthy; if he told Gold to wait, he would wait.</i>
</p><p>Gold has enough on his plate, what with trying desperately to make sure his very-definitely-not-a-date with Silver goes well. But when Silver goes missing from the middle of Celadon City, he very quickly realizes he might just have something much bigger to worry about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Desserts (And Dinners Too)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silent_Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_Fire/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy!

The day had dawned bright and sunny and perfect. All around them, the flowers of Celadon City were blooming in pink and gold and orange, spilling from window boxes and clustered on sidewalks. It should've been a perfect day, and it probably would have been if Gold weren't about ready to sink straight through the ground out of sheer awkwardness.

When he'd begged Silver to hang out with him, he hadn't thought about the _conversation_ part of it. Finding things to talk about was never a problem when they were battling.

“So,” he said, gazing a little desperately at the shops lining the street, “what sort of food does your typhlosion like?”

Silver blinked, turning toward Gold with a look of confusion on his face. “What sort of food?”

“Yeah, you know! I thought maybe we could take our teams for lunch.” Despite the nervousness gnawing a hole in his chest, he couldn't help but smile. “My Meggie has such a sweet tooth; she'd eat nothing but candies all day long if I let her.”

And then spend the next week complaining of a stomachache, probably—his meganium, much as he loved her, wasn't exactly a model of self-restraint. Sometimes he swore she'd gotten _less_ mature as she evolved. Still, there was no one else he'd rather explore with.

“What food…” Silver paused a moment, glaring down at the pavement as if it offended him. (Maybe it did. Gold never quite knew what was running through Silver's head.) Finally, he shrugged. “I don't really know. We always just ate whatever was cheapest.”

He spat the words out quietly, shoulders hunched as though he expected Gold to—what? Mock him? Pity him?

And okay, sure, Gold did think it was a bit sad that he'd spent years adventuring across Johto with his team and still didn't know what their favorite foods were. It wasn't exactly a _surprise_ , though; he'd already known that Silver could be—to say the least—a little insensitive.

( _A complete ass_ he would've said once, back when he had few pokémon and fewer badges and the only side of Silver he'd seen was the vicious, angry kid who'd knocked him down and stolen one of Professor's Elm's beloved pokémon. But he and Silver had fought against each other and beside each other more times than he could count, and by now they were… something other than enemies, something more than rivals, even. Friends, maybe, or else something much harder to put a name to.)

“All right, then,” Gold said, keeping his voice as cheerful as possible. “That's fine! Celadon's huge, I'm sure there's something good around here we can try out. A buffet place, maybe? That should have lots of options—”

“I know a place that's pretty good,” Silver interrupted.

“Huh?” Now it was Gold's turn to be confused. “Seriously? I didn't know you'd been to Celadon before.” He supposed it wasn't all that unusual—he'd seen him in Mount Moon once, so it wasn't like Silver was new to Kanto—but last he'd heard Silver spent most of his time learning from the Elite Four or battling other trainers on Victory Road. “You should have called me up if you were visiting the region! I would've swung by.”

Would've dropped pretty much anything to visit, really; he'd been working up the courage to ask Silver on a non-training-related outing for a good long while.

Silver's head dropped towards the ground, strands of long red hair falling into his face with the movement. “Not while I was a trainer. I… lived here when I was a kid. Just for a little while.”

“Oh.” And sure, Gold knew next to nothing about Silver's childhood, but he knew enough about the pinched expression on Silver's face to know that he needed to drop this, _now_ , if wanted this conversation to end in anything other than a fight. “Okay, cool. If you think it's good, I'll try it. Lead the way.”

Silver stopped a moment, just staring at Gold, before he sighed and the tension fled his posture. “Okay,” he said. “Follow me.”

\---

Silver's restaurant turned out to be more of a food stand than anything else; a pair of women sold wraps and soups and skewers of fried vegetables from a window-front that faced the street directly. The storefront itself looked dingy, but the crowds of people milling about in a loose line leading up to the counter promised otherwise.

“It's still looks just the same,” Silver said. Something that might have been a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Smells the same, too.”

Gold quickly turned his attention to the restaurant, trying hard not to blush. He really wasn't used to seeing him smile like that. Silver used to spend a lot of time during their battles smirking or sneering at Gold, but the expression on his face now was something much more honest.

“I'm not surprised.” Gold swept a hand out, gesturing at the people all around them. “Seems like it's really popular.”

“It's close to the casino, so a lot of people stop by once they're done playing.” 

“Oh yeah?”

Silver nodded. “When I was little, I used to come here for lunch a lot when my dad was working. He'd leave me some money most mornings, and this was my favorite place to go.”

It was easy enough to imagine: tiny Silver, pockets full of coins, wandering the streets of Celadon like he owned them. Setting his money on a counter that was taller than he was. Gold wasn't sure whether the mental image was adorable or sad. 

“Well, that's a relief,” he said. “For a second I thought you were going to tell me you knew about this place because you had an underage gambling addiction or something.

“Idiot.” Silver snorted.

They took their places in the line, shoving away a few of the people who seemed particularly drunk. (Always a problem in Celadon's gambling district, even at one in the afternoon.) Silver didn't have too much to say, but he listened patiently enough as Gold told the story of his most recent tragedy, The Shiny That Got Away— _it was so close, Silver, I swear! If I'd just had a pokémon on me that knew mean look, I could have had a shiny donphan_ —and only interrupted him to insult his catching skills once or twice.

There was a pleasant sort of nervousness squirming its way through Gold's stomach as he spoke, happiness and terror intertwined. As a kid, he'd never really had too many friends; New Bark was a small town and he was an awkward kid. He'd never dreamed he could have a friend like this, the sort he could talk to and walk with and battle against like it was the easiest thing in the world, and he'd _especially_ never dreamed Silver would end up being that friend.

Even now, after years of knowing each other, he still kind of worried he might lose all this, that he might say the wrong thing and Silver would suddenly realize he didn't actually want to spend time with him after all. 

But… well, if it hadn't happened yet, it probably wasn't going to. He'd just about lost track of all the times Silver had insulted him over the years—by now, it was more a friendly greeting than an insult.

“And so then,” Gold said, “the phanpy ran right into Union Cave—”

Silver twisted around, dark eyes going darker as they narrowed into slits. His face went still and cold, and his hands curled into fists at his sides.

“Silver? Are you okay?” 

“Fine,” he snapped. “I… just need to check something. I'll be right back.”

“Wha—wait, what?” Gold called out, but by the time he could process what Silver had said his friend was already stalking his way down the street. “Okay then.”

His instincts were screaming at him to run after Silver, but the more sensible side of his brain knew that would be a terrible idea. Silver could be odd sometimes, but he was trustworthy; if he told Gold to wait, he would wait.

…Even if the look he'd seen on Silver's face made him want to go hunt down whatever'd scared Silver that bad and make it _pay_.

\---

Gold shifted from foot to foot, tapped the case of his pokédex where it hung from his belt, counted the pidgey that pecked their way across the sidewalks. Anything at all to distract from his pokégear's watch and the way it kept counting through the seconds. 

Five minutes passed, then ten. That telltale shock of bright red hair was still nowhere to be seen, not even when Gold stood on his tiptoes to look over the heads of the adults. Wherever Silver had gone, he'd gone _fast_ ; Gold had no idea which direction he'd headed in.

 _He'll be fine,_ Gold told himself, _he can take care of anything this town wants to throw at him_. 

Silver might not be a Pokémon League Champion, but he was still one of the best battlers Gold had ever faced. Red could beat him, certainly—hell, he still couldn't beat Red—and Lance, and Gold himself. Blue, maybe. Other than that… not much could really stand up to Silver, especially now that he actually listened to his pokémon.

And yet he was still nervous. Stupid emotions.

“Sir?”

Gold blinked, pulled from his worries by the voice calling out to him. Somehow, without even noticing it, he'd ended up at the front of the line.

“Sir, are you ready to order?” She glanced behind him, looking at the line that stretched around the storefront. “What can I get you to eat?”

“I…” Silver hadn't ever told him what he wanted. “I have no idea.”

Gold glanced down at his pokégear. _Thirty minutes?!_

Silver could be a jerk some of the time. Silver could be a jerk a _lot_ of the time. But he wouldn't leave Gold in the middle of a city crowd for half an hour without so much as a message. Something was wrong.

Instinct finally won out.

“I gotta go, actually. Bye!”

He heard a confused shout behind him, but he didn't have it in him to care. He was already running out of the line, pulling a poké ball from his belt as he moved. Direction didn't matter, speed didn't matter, what mattered was that he was doing something.

“Donna, come on out!” 

His houndoom burst from her poké ball with a flash of red light, landing on the cobblestones before him with a sleek grace.

“Hey there, girl,” Gold said, smiling at her. “Do you think you can find Silver for me?” 

She gave him a smug, knowing look, the sort only a dark-type pokémon could manage.

“Shut up,” he groaned. “I just need you to help me, okay?”

He knew what his team thought. Pokémon relationships were simple, after all—there were teammates, family, rivals, enemies, and mates, and everything fell easily into one of those five categories. They didn't have to worry about asking a friend to lunch without making it seem weird, or wonder how to deal with feelings even he didn't really _get_.

She snorted a plume of smoke, shaking her head, and then put her nose to the ground. Celadon City was huge and almost overwhelmingly full of people and pokémon, but Gold had absolute faith in Donna. Her nose had never once failed him.

He followed her through the winding streets, running as fast as he could to keep up with her loping gait. More than once, he nearly crashed headlong into a pedestrian; it was only long years of experience dodging angry wild pokémon that let him slip through the tiny gaps in the crowds.

Before long, the throngs of people started to thin out. The streets got stiller and quieter, and the buildings got bigger and bigger. At Gold's best guess, they were in some sort of warehouse area.

Finally, Donna stopped and gestured with her horned head down a nearby alley. The meaning was clear: _he's here_.

“Thanks,” Gold said, speaking in a whisper despite himself. He let his hand rest on the joint of her shoulder, and together they walked into the mouth of the alley.

 _Silver's okay_ , was the first thing Gold thought. The rush of relief, so strong his knees nearly buckled, shocked him. Until that moment, he hadn't allowed himself to actually worry that Silver might actually be hurt or _worse_ —

_He's not, though. No point in worrying about it._

His second thought was irritation, because _Silver was okay_ and he hadn't even bothered to so much as call. 

He was standing deep in the alley, long shadows covering his face and blending in with his dark jacket, facing a stranger with a poké ball in his hand. His typhlosion was already out, crouching on all fours with its collar of flame burning low and hot and its claws digging into the concrete. The stranger had a raticate out, smaller than typhlosion but sturdy-looking nevertheless. Its whiplike tail lashed back and forth as the two pokémon circled each other warily.

A pokémon battle. Gold sighed, pressing a hand against his head. Silver had blown him off to have a pokémon battle with some random guy on the other side of town. Gold liked battling as much as the next person—probably a whole lot more than the next person, actually—but this was just ridiculous.

“Silver,” he said as he stepped forward, “what are you _doing_?”

Silver jumped, twisting around to look at him, and Gold froze completely.

 _Not good_. Apparently, Silver wasn't okay after all.

The expression on his face wasn't the smug smirk he wore when he was winning a battle or the tense little frown that took over when he was about to lose; it was something dark and frightened and hunted, more like a wild pokémon than a human being. His typhlosion already looked badly winded, covered in shallow bites where the raticate's teeth had dug in. Blood ran in rivulets down its back and sides and pooled in its sleek fur.

Typhlosion was shaking with exhaustion. The Silver he knew would have switched out his pokémon before letting it get this hurt.

“You shouldn't be here,” Silver snarled.

“Neither should you.” Gold took another step forward, one hand held out in a calming gesture. The fur of Donna's nape bristled under his fingertips. “What are you doing?”

The stranger at the other end of the alley glanced back and forth between him and Silver nervously. Gold kept his eyes focused on Silver through sheer force of will, trusting Donna to protect them both if the man decided to order his raticate to attack.

Silver scowled. “This guy's a Rocket-”

“ _Ex_ -Rocket,” interrupted the stranger, “and it's not like you have any room to talk, you-”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Silver snapped. 

...Okay. Gold took a deep breath. This wasn't what Gold had expected at all. He knew Silver hated Rockets, but he'd assumed it was a passive sort of loathing; they were there, they were weak, why not fight them? The tension in his face, though, spoke of something much more personal.

It hit Gold, then, just how little he knew about his best friend's past.

“You didn't come back.” Gold took another step closer to Silver. “I was worried.”

“I can take care of myself. And I can take care of this guy.”

The stranger's raticate bristled at the threat, teeth snapping open and closed with a sharp crack of bone-on-bone. The stranger himself tensed.

“Listen, kid,” he said, “I don't know who you are, but you should get out of here. This is between us.”

Gold shook his head. “Silver's my friend. If it involves him, it involves me.”

“Gold...” Silver turned to look at him, an unreadable expression in his eyes.

“So tell me—what's going on?” He smiled at Silver, hoping it would be at least a little reassuring, then turned to look at the stranger. “Why did this even start?”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. 

“I saw him when we were waiting in line,” Silver said finally, his voice low. “I recognized him right away. He's one of Team Rocket's top executives—he runs their pokémon smuggling operations through the Celadon Casino. I couldn't let him get away.”

“ _Ran,_ ” the main said. His fists were clenched at his sides, held so tight Gold could see his knuckles starting to turn white. He looked as though he could explode into violence at any moment, and Gold very carefully took a small step to put himself between the man and Silver. “That was years and years ago. I'm not with Team Rocket anymore—not since they disbanded.” He swallowed. “…I've got a wife, a kid on the way. I just want to forget that all of it ever happened.”

“But it did happen,” Silver said. His voice was barely a whisper. There was no way the stranger could hear; Gold doubted that even he was supposed to be able to pick up that little sentence.

At his side, Donna was snarling.

From the tone of his voice, Gold could tell very well what the man was implying—he hadn't been to jail, and he most definitely didn't plan to go anytime soon. Most likely, his family didn't even know about his past. 

That was… well, Gold had all sorts of things to say—none of them good—about the kind of guy who'd lie to his family about something like that. But he could also see the tight bestial fear burning in the man's eyes, a look that said _I will fight you to protect what I love_. 

And, more importantly, he could see the way that Silver had half-turned to face him, the way he was sliding glances towards him even as his typhlosion focused on the stranger's raticate. Somehow, for some reason, Silver wanted to hear what Gold had to say. 

He didn't understand why it mattered to Silver, only that it did. That was enough to make him choose his words carefully.

“It's pretty stupid that you decided to stay here,” Gold said. “Celadon was huge for the Rockets. Even if we hadn't come along, I'm sure someone would have recognized you eventually. And your wife deserves to know about your past—if and when something happens to you, it's only going to hurt her. But…”

Gold paused, looked over at Silver. Took a deep breath. 

“But I don't really think it's my business right now to try and punish you for what you did.” Especially not through a back-alley pokémon battle like this; he didn't want to see either his pokémon or Silver's get hurt trying to settle this grudge. “So, if it's okay with you, we're going to leave now.”

He reached out and—slowly, cautiously, all the while feeling like his heart was going to pound right out of his chest—took Silver's hand. For a moment, he thought Silver might try to shake him off, but then his fingers closed around Gold's.

“Come on, Donna. Typhlosion, you too.” 

He started walking towards the mouth of the alley, desperately hoping the raticate wouldn't jump him the moment his back was turned. The soft _click-click-click_ of claws on stone echoed through the alley as his pokémon settled into step behind him.

Together, they left.

\---

They walked silently for a good ten minutes. Silver's hand had his in a death grip; it almost felt tight enough to cut off hiscirculation. Gold couldn't bear to look at him, couldn't imagine what he was supposed to say. He barely knew the layout of Celadon City, and so he wandered aimlessly. Hopefully he wouldn't lead them in a circle—he could only imagine the man wouldn't be too happy to see them show back up fifteen minutes later.

Finally, he stopped. He'd come to the bank of a small river, just big enough that they couldn't step across it easily. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of children splashing in the cool water.

Silver blinked, as if coming out of a trance, and said hoarsely, “There's a bridge about a half a mile down if you want to cross.”

If he wanted to cross, Gold could just call out one of his pokémon—his meganium would be able to lift him across easily. He didn't say that, though; instead, he flopped down onto the springy grass, dragging Silver with him.

“Nah,” he said, “this looks comfortable. Let's rest here for a while.”

With a soft, contented growl, Donna stretched out next to him. Silver's typhlosion walked around to Silver's open side and pressed itself against its trainer, looking at Silver with soft worry in its eyes.

Silver's eyes widened. For the first time, he seemed to be aware of his pokemon's condition: the dried blood matted in its fur, the gouges that were starting to scab over, the way it was favoring its front left paw as it knelt.

“I'm sorry,” he said. He ran his free hand over his typhlosion's head. “I'm—I'm so so sorry.”

Typhlosion snorted, smoke pouring from its nostrils, and butted Silver's shoulder with its head.

Gold couldn't hold back a smile. Once, Silver would never apologized to his pokémon. 

“I was going to try and take us to the pokémon center,” he said, “but it turns out this city is enormous and I'm even worse with directions than I thought. If you know the way, we can over in a bit, but uh… it might be better if you calm down a bit first.”

Silver wasn't crying, exactly, but his eyes did look very red. He still hadn't let go of Gold's hand, though thankfully his grip had loosened a bit. “That's probably best,” he admitted.

 _So_ , Gold desperately wanted to ask, _what's up with you and Team Rocket?_

His first—ridiculous—thought was that Silver had been a member, but that was beyond impossible. The original Team Rocket had been known for recruiting young, but not _that_ young; he and Silver had been just little kids when they disbanded. His second thought was that maybe Silver had lost someone to them. He'd had a pokémon stolen, or maybe a family member had been killed. It made more sense, a whole lot more sense, but somehow that didn't seem quite right either. The look in Silver's eyes hadn't been one of righteous anger—there was too much shame in it for that.

So that left him with… what? A dozen theories, each more ridiculous than the last (Silver had accidentally run drugs for them as a kid, Silver had helped them catch pokémon, Silver was the son or the brother of a Team Rocket member, Silver was the child of _Giovanni_ ) and no way to ask him about them without possibly losing Silver forever.

 _But maybe I won't have to ask,_ he thought. Maybe someday Silver would trust him enough to tell him. He could stand to wait for that.

So instead, he said, “You know, you never did tell me what to order. I didn't get us any food at all.”

For a moment, Silver seemed shocked. A minuscule smile curved at the corner of his mouth before he groaned, rolling his eyes. “You dolt. Is eating all you ever think about?”

“I can't help it! I'm hungry. And that place smelled delicious.” He frowned. “I bet the line's going to be even longer now, though.”

“Yeah, probably.” Silver glanced over at him. “…Sorry about that.”

“Whoa? A real apology? From _you_? I feel so special!”

“Don't get used to it.”

“Trust, me I wasn't going to.” Gold grinned, happy to be back on more solid ground. “Once we hit the pokémon center, you want to go back there or what?”

Silver thought for a moment. “It'll just be a longer wait. If you want, we can try someplace new.”

“Okay, sure! Sounds good to me.” 

Already Silver was looking better—his eyes were still red, but he didn't look quite so broken anymore. Gold reached out with his free hand, smoothing a stray twist of hair back into place, and laughed when Silver glared at him.

“You ready?”

Silver nodded and went to stand up, then paused. His eyes dropped to where his hand was still clenched around Gold's. His expression looked as though he were seeing it for the first time.

“Ah,” he said. His face began to turn a steady shade of tomate berry red. “I, um.”

Before Silver could pull his hand away and pretend like nothing had happened, Gold clenched his own fingers tighter around Silver's. “If you don't mind,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could handle, as though his pulse weren't jumping like a runaway spoink, “we can hold on a bit longer.”

Silver looked furiously down at the ground, letting his hair fall over his face. “Okay," he said, something like hope in his voice. “I guess that's fine.”


End file.
